Gospel Story Finder

Occasionally bad weather would interrupt those outdoor services, and both the speakers and congregation were uncomfortable. President Joseph F. Smith, who remembered well the discomfort of those outdoor meetings held near the temple in Nauvoo, said:
“My first recollection of a place of worship was in Nauvoo. It was in a little grove of trees near the site of the temple. In company with my mother I listened here to such men as Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Orson Hyde, Parley P. Pratt, Orson Pratt, the Prophet Joseph and the Patriarch Hyrum. I remember quite well attending one meeting in this grove, that a wagon had been drawn up in front of the audience and the Prophet Joseph stood in the box speaking, when it began to rain. Some one or two persons got up and held umbrellas over him, to shield him from the wet. Many of the people had no umbrellas, and it was very annoying and disagreeable to sit there, but I remember very well, though but a little boy, that there was no one went away from the ground while he spoke.”

When I decided to serve a mission, one of the most difficult things was reading the Book of Mormon and keeping a journal. It took me an entire hour to read just one page of the scriptures. Since I had never been great at writing, I wondered how I would be able to effectively document in my journal all the wonderful experiences I would have as a missionary.
But I kept trying and praying for the Lord’s help.
As time went by, I saw small changes. By the end of my mission, I was able to read better than I ever had in my life. And as I kept attempting to write in my journal, I suddenly learned that I actually enjoyed writing. When I finished my mission, I had filled five journals.
This experience taught me that when we turn to the Lord in our efforts, He can truly bring about miracles in our lives.

Mateo was playing the best soccer of his life. In the preseason, he’d scored five times. His passes were crisp, his defense superb. He was popular with fans, teammates, and coaches.
“So why not relax a little before the season opener?” he thought. The next week he took it easy. He arrived at practice just as it was starting and played with less than his best effort. “It’s OK,” he thought. “In the game, I’ll turn it up a notch.”
But the night before the match, friends came by. He stayed up late, then slept in, and barely arrived as the game was starting. When the coach asked what was wrong, he brushed it off. He couldn’t remember the game plan, but it was too late to go over it again. “I’ll just have to rely on what I did last week,” he said.
The game did not go well. Mateo tried to blame teammates, coaches, and officials. But he knew in his heart that it was his fault. If you’re into sports, you know why: if you want to play well, you prepare all week long. Then when the real game comes you’re ready to take the field.
By the way, after one bad week, Mateo returned to proper preparation and strengthened his season. Each week he focused on the basics and got ready all week long. From then on, he came to games ready to take the field.

As Sister Simpson and I walked along lower Queen Street in Auckland, New Zealand, the other day, we came to a particular place not far from the wharf. There we paused for a few moments as I related to her the incident that took place at that very spot during my first mission.
I could still see in my mind’s eye a very old Maori couple who stood at the curb with thousands of others waving farewell to the Maori Battalion as they marched down to their troop transport and off to war.
The old couple became very excited as one young soldier glanced their way with a big smile. From their Maori conversation, it became apparent that this was their great-grandson going off to war.
His would be an atomic war with sophisticated equipment capable of killing by the thousands—so unlike the Maori wars of the late 1800s that the old Maori had participated in as a young tribal warrior.
Soon the boy was gone from view, and it was then that the old man turned to his wife and said (perhaps a little cynically), “Ka tahi kua pakeha tatou,” which in effect means, “So now we are civilized.”

One of her novels that best illustrates this process is titled The Pillars of the House.3 It ­narrates the adventures of a family with ­thirteen children. Their father is a poor clergy­man working as a curate to help oversee a ­parish in the Anglican Church. They are a complex and lively family whose members have their share of joy, laughter, and comfort in one another as well as their share of the ­conflicts, petty betrayals, and estrangements that any group of humans encounters when they interact on a daily basis. In other words, this family behaves as a typical family does.

That is, until their father contracts tuberculosis from a poor man he helped to nurse, suffers for years, and dies the day that his wife delivers her last two children—twins. Their mother passes away three years later, having never recovered from complications due to falling down the stairs while she was pregnant. The thirteen children are left to fend for themselves, and this is where the real plot of the novel begins.

Yonge’s novel narrates the children’s ­predicament and the means they take to ­survive. Underlying this narrative is a prolonged contemplation on what it means to live a peaceful life in the midst of nearly unimaginable adversity. One of the characters in the book whose life demonstrates this struggle most clearly is the eldest child of the family, a young man who takes it upon himself to oversee and support his siblings when he is only sixteen years old.

His name is Felix. Felix is not living the life his parents had envisioned for him. Both his father and his mother began life in relative ease. His father attended university and was groomed to take a position as a clergyman on the family estate. He married and had his first few children during this period. Soon enough, however, a legal complication meant that he lost any prospect of working on or inheriting the estate, and he had to take a low-paying job in a parish far away.

The ramifications of this scenario for Felix are great. He was to be the eldest son of a substantial clergyman, sure to have the chance for advanced education and a prosperous career. Instead, Felix chooses to leave his local school before he even has a chance to compete for a scholarship to university. He takes a job at the local newspaper office and stationery store, curtails his hopes of doing anything else, and focuses on doing what he can for his family.

One can easily imagine Felix becoming overwhelmed with his responsibilities, fearful about what the future might hold and embittered about his position in life. Indeed, he struggles with all of these reactions. And he is not the only one. Upon learning about Felix’s decision to leave school, his brother Edgar, a young teenager with great talent as an artist, grabs a half-burnt stick and takes out his indignation on the whitewashed wall of his bedroom by covering it with a charcoal sketch of the Greek hero Achilles as he shouted down the Trojan army. In this battle, Achilles’s comrade, Patroclus, had just been killed, and Achilles was furious. Yonge described the scene in a storybook she wrote for children:

The Trojans came thicker and more furiously on them, and were almost bursting in, when Achilles, hearing the noise, came out, and, standing on the rampart just as he was, all unarmed, gave a terrible thundering shout, at which the Trojans were filled with dismay, and fled back in confusion.4

Edgar explains to his sister, “If I were but older—I know I could—I’d save Felix from this horrible thing! I feel to want to roar”5 just like Achilles! Edgar’s impassioned and heartfelt despair and frustration at his own powerlessness is certainly understandable.

Felix himself, though, chooses a different way of confronting his situation. Felix often makes difficult choices that align his will with what he understands of the Lord’s will for him. He certainly experiences as much emotional turmoil as Edgar, but he also manages to find some peace in the midst of adversity. Take, for example, one of the few recreations Felix allows himself after he assumes responsibility for providing for his family: he continues to sing in the church choir. The choir is an integral part of nearly every Anglican observance, so this is a drain on Felix’s very limited time. In spite of this, he never seems to consider letting this commitment go. Even after sorting through a particularly difficult domestic conflict during the Christmas holidays, Felix hurries to be on time to the holiday service. That night, Yonge explains, Felix found himself “singing, as he had never sung before,—‘Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.’”7

What Felix seems to find in religious observance, particularly in musical observance, is a sense of reverence, a sense of a presence larger than himself that can put his own troubles into perspective. This is a conviction that Edgar lacks.

Likewise, Felix’s ability to feel awe anchors him. It allows him to accept his own and ­others’ human limitations, the limitations that Edgar so resents. It allows him to reconcile himself to the idea of a Maker who continues to shape and direct events and to trust that Maker after he has done all he can. Reverence brings Felix peace.

Reverence also gives Felix humility to ­persevere in the efforts that he knows are essential for the well-being of his family. And Felix is given some profound lessons in humility. A few of these lessons come from his brother Fulbert, who is by turns rowdy and sullen. Fulbert is young—just ten when his father dies—and Yonge deftly portrays the way that Fulbert translates his grief into marked resentment of his elder brother’s newfound authority. Fulbert knows exactly how to provoke Felix; it is as though all Felix’s patience and long-suffering evaporate when Fulbert spitefully wastes the precious food prepared for dinner, wreaks havoc in the town streets, or gambles.

What is Felix to do when his best efforts fail? Felix humbles himself. He restrains his anger, attempts to see the situation from Fulbert’s point of view, and does what he can to lead without imposing authority. In essence, he follows Christ’s admonition in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9). He does his best to make peace with Fulbert. In doing so, he implements the counsel on leadership that the Lord gave to Joseph Smith—to lead “by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned” (D&C 121:41). Eventually this has an effect.

Another brother, Theodore, has an entirely different set of needs. Theo, as his family calls him, is one of the twins born the day their father died. He is mentally disabled, unable to communicate beyond cheerful sounds when he is content and moans when he is not. Over the years a close and caring relationship develops between Theo and Felix. Theo is rarely more content than when he is in Felix’s company, so Felix keeps him close whenever possible. Felix even incorporates Theo into the church choir, not to sing the words but to vocalize the melody. On a daily basis Felix serves Theo, and their bond becomes stronger and stronger as time passes.

One way of understanding this bond is to see it in the context of Christ’s teachings about charity. As we learn in 1 Corinthians 13:4, “Charity suffereth long, and is kind,” and as Moroni wrote, “Charity is the pure love of Christ” (Moroni 7:47). The daily sacrifices that Felix makes for Theo forge this type of love.

As both Felix and Theo come to adulthood, this love is put to the test. One day several members of the family enjoy a picnic and a boat ride down a nearby river. They are laughing and singing, as well as enduring a little family squabbling, when another boat comes suddenly around a corner, colliding with them violently so that both boats capsize. Felix is so attuned to caring for Theo that by reflex he dives to get hold of the full-grown Theo in the deep water and tows him to shore, using nothing short of superhuman strength to pull the two of them up the steep embankment and over the iron guardrail before he returns to help in the rescue of the others. Felix’s sincere and selfless love for his brother trumps any concern for his own welfare, for in the midst of this rescue Felix sustains an injury that will eventually take his life.

Several months later, having realized that his wound will never fully heal, Felix looks back on this experience and on the responsibilities he had undertaken nearly two decades earlier. He remarks to a family friend who has been a true mentor through the years, “I have had my full share of happiness. A most happy, peaceful family.”9 Looking at what Felix has endured, peace and happiness do not seem to be the hallmarks of his life. Yet for Felix, charity, patience, peacemaking, humility, and reverence have all combined to shape him into a person who is capable of enduring adversity while retaining the peace that Christ offers to us all.

I was ordained an elder, and on the day of my departure for active duty with the navy, a member of my ward bishopric joined my family and friends at the train station to bid me farewell. Just before train time, he placed in my hand a small volume titled Missionary Handbook. I laughed and commented that I wasn’t going on a mission.
He answered, “Take it anyway. It may come in handy.”
It did. I needed a hard, rectangular object to place in the bottom of my seabag so that my clothing would stay more firm and would thus be less wrinkled. The Missionary Handbook was just what I needed, and it served well in my seabag for 12 weeks.
The night before our Christmas leave, our thoughts were of home. The barracks were quiet, but then the silence was broken by my buddy in the adjoining bunk—a Mormon boy, Leland Merrill—who began to moan in pain. I inquired concerning the reason, and he said he felt really sick. He did not want to go to the base dispensary, for he knew that doing such would prevent his going home the following day.
He seemed to grow worse as the hours passed. Finally, knowing that I was an elder, he asked me to give him a priesthood blessing.
I had never before given a priesthood blessing, I had never received a blessing, and I had never witnessed a blessing being given. As I prayed silently for help, I remembered the Missionary Handbook in the bottom of my seabag. I quickly emptied the bag and took the book to the night-light. There I read how one blesses the sick. With many curious sailors looking on, I proceeded with the blessing. Before I could put everything back into my bag, Leland Merrill was sleeping like a child. He awakened the following morning feeling fine. The gratitude each of us felt for the power of the priesthood was immense.

I enjoy all the Church magazines very much. Until I left home and went on a mission, I never fully realized how filled they were with the words of the Lord as spoken through his prophets and other inspired men and women. I am working diligently to share the gospel with a girl back home in Virginia, and I have been turning more and more to the Church magazines in my efforts to fully answer her many questions.
My missionary apartment has a good-sized stack of Church magazines, of course, so one day I went through the whole stack, picking out those that I thought my friend would benefit from. When I finished, the stack I had picked out was larger than the stack that was left. I knew I couldn’t send that many magazines, so I tried again. About halfway through I stopped because every magazine had at least one good article or message. Finally I gritted my teeth and picked out the very best, but I still sent her a good-sized stack, along with a subscription to the New Era and the Ensign. I know that every one of those 23 issues will help her testimony grow, just as anyone reading them, member or nonmember, will be touched by them in some way.
Elder WoodmanIowa Des Moines Mission

My father once taught me about being "automatic for the Lord." I love all sports, but I really love basketball. When I was in high school, I was way too big and athletic to play varsity ball and so I played for the Pocatello 16th ward. Church ball was more important than anything to my friends and me. We played hard and my dad coached. I worked with my dad at our family business and one night we were hurrying home to get to a ball game. We were late, it was snowing and my dad pulled in the driveway. He stayed in the truck while I ran in the house to grab my gear. I jumped back in the truck and we headed down the street.

At the end of the street, Sister Olsen, a widow in the ward, was shoveling her driveway. My dad pulled over and said, "Grab her shovel." And then he took one out of the back of our truck and we started shoveling Sister Olsen's walks and driveway. I couldn't believe it. I was not happy. I might have even asked my dad, "What are you doing?" This game was important, not only to me, but to my dad too. Now I don't remember if we made it to the game, or if we won. But years later, I remember serving someone in need. I was taught what it meant to be a representative of the Lord. My Dad didn't hesitate or even have to think about not stopping. It's just what he does. I remember specifically feeling the spirit as Sister Olsen thanked us for the help.

Recently, on a family holiday at a game park north of our home in South Africa, my family decided we would spend a few nights in Johannesburg and visit the temple.
The hotel in Johannesburg was incredible. I mean, it was the kind of hotel you see in the movies. My bedroom suite was bigger than the kitchen and family room at home combined, the tiles in the bathroom were heated, and the television came out of a box when we pressed a button. The staff was there to take care of our every whim.
I was impressed. This, I thought, was how my life was meant to be: swanning around, acting like royalty. In fact, I was so caught up in the luxury of the hotel that I forgot why we were there in the first place.
The only opportunity my brother, sister, and I would have to attend the temple to do baptisms for the dead was Saturday morning. But instead of thinking about the temple, all I was thinking about was how nice it would be to sleep late on Saturday, spend the day in this beautiful hotel, and then leave for home.
Still, we decided to go to the temple. As I walked through the temple doors and saw and felt the holiness and beauty of that place, my perspective changed, and I realized what was really important. The hotel may have been beautiful, but it couldn’t compare to the temple. The feelings I had as I did baptisms for the dead brought such peace and joy to me, greater than any worldly pleasure.
I am so grateful for this lesson. It is easy to become caught up in the things of the world. These things are attractive, but the pleasure they bring doesn’t last. Now I more clearly understand that real joy and peace can be found only through obeying and honoring Heavenly Father’s commandments.

It was a tradition in our family to cross-country ski to our cabin each winter. My dad left for the cabin early with my two sisters. The weather was good, and they had no trouble skiing. The next morning when the rest of us started, weather conditions had changed.
Heavy snow was coming down. Large wet, sticky flakes were piling up fast. I was helping all I could as we pulled the sleds with kids and food on them behind us as we skied. With the new snow, the sleds were heavy and weren’t sliding along as they usually did. It only took a little while for us to see that we wouldn’t make it alone. Mom told me to go ahead to the cabin to find Dad.
I started out and was soon alone in the swirling snow. I came to a place where the path through the trees went two different directions. I started one way, but soon didn’t recognize the area. I went a little farther but soon felt frustrated because I wasn’t sure where I was.
I fell down crying, yelling for help. No one heard me and the flakes seemed to be coming down even harder. I remembered a talk I had heard in church from a college student home for Christmas. She said that when she needed help she would read her scriptures and pray. Soon her problems became easier to deal with and understand. She told of how when we need help in our lives, we should pray. I decided to try her advice. I knelt down there in the snow, folded my arms, and prayed.
When I’d explained the problem to Heavenly Father, I got back up and stood for a few minutes until I felt a strong feeling that I should turn around. I started heading back to where I had taken one of two paths. From there I went the other direction and felt comforted. I soon found our cabin.
I told Dad what had happened, and he followed my tracks back to find the others struggling in the storm.
Though perhaps not as dramatic as when Brigham Young sent men out to rescue the pioneer handcart companies, Dad said that was what came to mind when he found Mom and the others. Their suffering had not been as great as the pioneers, but it had been real enough and their joy in being rescued was just as genuine.
We were all glad to get inside the cabin where it was warm and safe. I prayed again and thanked Heavenly Father for comforting me and guiding me to the right path and giving me the strength to go the distance. I will always remember to turn to my Father in Heaven when I feel lost.

I said I was speaking to the young. I still am. A 14-year-old boy recently said to me a little hesitantly, “Brother Holland, I can’t say yet that I know the Church is true, but I believe it is.” I hugged that boy until his eyes bulged out. I told him with all the fervor of my soul that belief is a precious word, an even more precious act, and he need never apologize for “only believing.” I told him that Christ Himself said, “Be not afraid, only believe,” a phrase which, by the way, carried young Gordon B. Hinckley into the mission field. I told this boy that belief was always the first step toward conviction and that the definitive articles of our collective faith forcefully reiterate the phrase “We believe.” And I told him how very proud I was of him for the honesty of his quest.

On a stopover in Rome, President Hinckley gave Father Leonard Boyle, Prefect of the Vatican Library, a copy of the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. The two men greeted each other like longtime friends. Father Boyle was impressed with President Hinckley’s knowledge of books and the techniques used to deter their aging. At the end of the meeting, the prefect observed in his thick Irish brogue, “President Hinckley is truly a very remarkable man.”

The three children watched big-eyed but uncomplaining as their grandmother filled the visitor’s bowl with the watery, meatless stew. She served the small amount left in the pot to the children, not taking any for herself.
Black Elk compared his portion with that for the children, then poured more than half of it back into the pot. He unrolled his pack and removed most of a cooked rabbit left from his noonday meal. The smiling children ate ravenously. They had not had meat for many days.
He speared a chunk of meat with his knife and handed it to the woman. “Eat!” he said to the gaunt-looking grandmother. She had missed many meals, sacrificing for the children. And, still, they were too thin. The sad plight of the little family troubled the Indian youth, who had seen the lone tepee and had stopped for the night.
When the children were asleep, he and the woman talked by the fire. “My son,” she said, “was killed by a wounded bear last fall. The children, their mother, and I wintered here alone after that. Then the mother took cold and died of a fever. My joints are stiff and I am too lame to hunt game,” she sighed. “We have survived on roots, nuts, and greens still growing in sheltered spots; but the children grow weaker by the day. I am so old and weary … I—I fear for them,” she added hopelessly.
Black Elk slept little that night. It had snowed lightly and he rose at dawn, stiff and chilled. The children shivered in tattered blankets by the fire as the old one brewed herb tea for breakfast. The youth felt ashamed when his stomach growled protests at such meager fare.
He urged the woman to return with him to his village, a week’s journey from here, but she refused. It was almost spring. Her tribe would come searching for the lost family. There was another son. He and his wife would take his brother’s children for their own. She must wait here.
Black Elk was dismayed by her refusal. But since she would not budge, he could not leave them alone to starve. By chance, they had all become his responsibility! He was only a youth, and Black Elk felt overwhelmed by such a heavy burden.
He taught the older girl, Singing Bird, to set snares for small game. He and the boy, Brown Tree, fished through the ice that still covered the lake, and hunted large game that was sparse in the area.
The woman was a good cook, and every scrap of fur she turned into warm clothing for the children, whose thin faces were rounding out as they became sleek and well fed. The old one became stronger, and the baby no longer coughed during the night. Black Elk felt pride as he looked at them. He was a good provider for the little family, as he must someday become for a family of his own.
As the weeks passed, he began to worry more and more about his own people. The braves, thinking him lost, would certainly have searched for him after so long a time, but his tribe seldom hunted in this area where game was scarce. Had they given up hope of finding him? Was his mother mourning his death? And suppose this family’s people failed to come! Black Elk felt despair as he considered the possibility.
The old one saw that Black Elk was deeply troubled and homesick. “You have helped us enough. Return to your own people,” she urged gently one evening.
Black Elk looked at the dimpled baby making happy sounds as she played with rolling pine cones. “I cannot … yet,” he murmured miserably, turning away.
Pink fingers of light probed the eastern sky a few days later as the youth awoke to the sound of approaching horses. He rolled out of the wickiup he had erected beside the tattered tepee and snatched up his bow and arrows. Are the visitors friends or enemies? he wondered. The old one and Brown Tree stood bravely beside him. Singing Bird carried the baby into the forest to hide.
They listened. There were many horses! It was foolish to greet such a large group with weapons. Black Elk and the boy laid them aside and stood stiffly, waiting. The first Indians entered the clearing. Then Black Elk relaxed as the woman uttered a joyful cry and ran forward to greet her kinsmen!
The youth would have preferred to slip away unnoticed and return to his people, but the children’s uncle refused to permit it. Black Elk had taken the place of a dead brave and preserved his family from certain death. There must be a feast and dance in his honor.
The next morning Black Elk turned for a last look at the village of tepees that had sprouted like mushrooms. There was a haze of smoke from the cooking fires. He was leaving many new friends and the family he had nourished and cared for. When he said a sad farewell to the old woman and the children his eyes stung and his throat seemed strangely choked as the baby clung to him and cried. He would miss them.
Now he had long miles to travel. Miles that would go fast on the back of the beautiful spotted pony the uncle had given him. Other relatives had placed fine necklaces around his neck and a new skinning knife in his sheath.
But the most treasured gift was for his mother, from the old one. It was a magnificent woven rug of many colors. “To turn her tears of sorrow into tears of joy and pride in her son, who has proven he is a brave, returning to her in honor and high regard,” the grandmother said, clasping his hand for a moment.

A friend told of a time when, as a young mother, her five-year-old daughter inquired, "Mom, who shall I marry?"
Although somewhat puzzled by the question coming from such a young child, she thought for a moment and responded, "I believe David is a good boy."
"Mom," questioned the small girl, "Does he know the way to the temple?"
As years passed David did not know the way to the temple and the righteous daughter married a young man who did know the way. She was sealed in the temple, and now continues to keep her precious covenants and eternal perspective.

“I was about eight or nine years old when I lost the sight in my right eye. But it wasn’t until I looked through binoculars that I realized I could see only through my left eye. I lost the use of that eye when I was about fourteen years old. Now I can see only the difference between light and dark.”

But having lost the ability to see with his eyes, Brother Juntratip has been able to develop the ability to see with the Spirit.

“I was in my late twenties when I first met the Latter-day Saint missionaries. They were bicycling by the house one day and saw me. They stopped and introduced themselves and asked if I had ever heard of the Church. When I said no, they told me about Joseph Smith and the First Vision.
“From what they told me, I felt that Joseph Smith was a good man who had done nothing wrong. At their suggestion, I knelt and prayed to Heavenly Father to know if what they had told me was true. When I got up from my knees, I had this soft, warm feeling down my spine.”
The elders arranged to come again, this time bringing Braille editions of the Book of Mormon and The Articles of Faith by Elder James E. Talmage—both in English.
But Pornchai says he had been prepared for this moment. His father, a bank clerk, started teaching him English when Pornchai was nine years old. When he was ten, he began working with a tutor. Later, he enrolled in a four-year high school correspondence course offered by a college for the blind in the United States. He had completed the course and received an American high school diploma shortly before the missionaries stopped to talk to him.
“When I look back on those years, I realize that everything fitted into place,” says Brother Juntratip. “Not only was I able to read the books the missionaries gave me, but I think I was also prepared spiritually to receive the gospel message.
“I grew up observing the customs of two religions. Like most Thais, I was raised a Buddhist. My parents, being of Chinese descent, would observe Chinese religious customs, such as the new-year festival, the ancestral festival, and the new-moon festival.
“But I had read of Jesus Christ, and as a small boy—a long, long time ago—I had watched movies in which the Lord was depicted, like The Ten Commandments and The Robe. And I believed in God. I told myself that there must be a God, because if there were no God, who created the universe and all the good and beautiful things in it? There had to be an omnipotent Being.”
Brother Juntratip was baptized on 6 December 1976, at the age of twenty-eight.
By then, his parents had died, but he faced opposition from his two younger brothers. “They were university-trained engineers, and their only religion was materialism. They couldn’t understand what I was doing.”
Three years later, they opposed his decision to attend Brigham Young University—Hawaii Campus. “My brothers were sure I’d fail,” recalls Brother Juntratip, “and they didn’t want the embarrassment of having to bring me home.” To try to keep him from going, his brothers took control of a piece of property his mother had left him. He had planned to sell the property to acquire money for college expenses. But his brothers said they would hold the property so that if he failed, they could sell it and use the money to bring him home.
But Brother Juntratip still went ahead with his plans and enrolled at BYU—Hawaii. He wrote to an airline company asking them to let him fly half-fare. They responded by giving him a free ticket.
Pornchai studied English literature at the university, taping the lectures and also listening to taped versions of the study text. He supported himself by transcribing oral history tapes.
He graduated in December 1983 and then entered BYU at Provo, Utah, for graduate work in English literature. “Because I did well while in college in Hawaii, my brothers let me have the money from the property sale to pay my way to Utah,” says Brother Juntratip. “I had to give so much time to my studies that I couldn’t work to support myself, but luckily I was awarded a scholarship. I received my master’s degree in June 1986 and returned to Thailand.”
For seven months after returning to Thailand, Brother Juntratip taught students in his home. Then he was offered a position as translator for the Church.
“I had been praying that I would find employment that would fit my particular circumstances, and the translation job does that. I translate seminary and institute student manuals into Thai.”
At first, Brother Juntratip hired someone to read the English text to him. He would dictate the Thai translation into a tape recorder, and the tapes would then be transcribed. These last two steps were eliminated when he taught himself to use a Thai-language typewriter. Later, he replaced the typewriter with a computer, making revisions and corrections easier. In addition, he now receives a taped version of the original English text.
Brother Juntratip met his wife, Kwanjai, a couple of years after his return from BYU. She had served a mission in Thailand.
The Juntratips were sealed in the Manila Philippines Temple in June 1990 by the temple president, Floyd Hogan, who had been Kwanjai’s mission president. Their son, Pituporn, was born in August 1991. “His name means patriarchal blessing,” explains Brother Juntratip. “We hope he grows up to be a good missionary like his mother.
“I remember that when the missionaries presented the discussions to me, I felt the gospel message they taught me was true, was good,” he says. “By striving to live my life according to the gospel, I have come to know for a certainty that it is true and it is good.”

They recognized that their challenges were not at an end. Juan, a priest, was about to enter the army. “It will not be easy to maintain Church standards in the military,” he said, “but I believe that through many prayers I can do it. I do not intend to isolate myself from others who do not share my standards or to try to appear better than they are. But when one of them offers me a cigarette, I will ask for a stick of chewing gum instead. I want to teach the gospel to them.” He felt that the priesthood he bears will be a real help in difficult circumstances. “I don’t believe that anyone who holds the priesthood could possibly ask for anything more. We must be faithful and steadfast in this great calling in order to carry the work forward.”

When I was young, I came home from a mission and needed a job. I got married and was working for a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month when I heard there was a job in Scouting in Ogden. An old friend, Howard McDonald, past president of your University here, met me on the street and wanted to know if I wanted that job.

“What is it?” I asked.

He said, “You get paid for being a Boy Scout leader. Lots of fun. You direct the Scout work in a community.”

The only thing I had ever done in Scouting was to help my little brother in a fire-by-friction situation. I showed him how to make fire by friction in our kitchen, and all I succeeded in doing was boring a hole through our kitchen linoleum. So I said that I was not interested; but all the way home that night I thought, “Well, why not? Maybe I could do it. I don’t know what it’s about.” So I applied to the president of the local council in such a manner that he was not impressed—anything but impressed. I was frightened, I was stuttering, I was hesitating, I did not know what to say, I could not give him any reason for wanting the job, I did not know what the job was, but I said, “I want it.”

He looked at me casually, and finally he said, “Well, we are going to receive written applications, so if you want to write an application we’ll read it.”

So I wrote the application, and to my surprise I was invited to come to a meeting where I could be interviewed. There were eight candidates, all of whom had had years of experience in volunteer Scouting. I had had none. At that time, however, I suddenly became very calm, very sure of myself. I did not have the least fear. When my turn came to speak—each of the others had taken at least thirty minutes each, so it took nearly all day to hear them, and I was the last one—the president reminded me that they were all tired. So I said, “I don’t know a thing about this job, but I know that I can learn to do it rapidly,” and then I sat down. To my surprise, I was one of two picked out of that crowd to appear before the board; and with that much of a statement before the executive board, against a man who had had fifteen years of experience, they chose me.

Looking back upon it, I can see the steps by which I was inspired to say the things I said and not say the things I should not have said to get that job. It proved to be good. I had it for twenty-three years before I became a member of the First Council of the Seventy. I am certain as I stand here that the Lord directed me to that job through Howard McDonald and others, and that I was given it, not because of any qualification—not at all—but because somehow I was supposed to have it.

Buzz, buzz.
Tyler sprawled on top of the jungle gym in his backyard, watching a fuzzy bee zip around and between the bars. “You won’t find any nectar here,” he said to the bee. “Go look somewhere else.”
A gust of wind blew through the yard, spinning the bee away. Tyler sat up. It was getting really windy. He looked over at the apricot tree his brothers Brad and Adam were playing under. Its branches were blowing straight back, like a giant brush was combing through its leaves.
“Tyler, get off the jungle gym,” a voice inside Tyler said. It wasn’t loud, but it was calm and sure. Tyler knew it was the right thing to do.
Tyler climbed down. Sitting beside his brothers under the apricot tree, he looked out at the backyard as the wind grew stronger.
Just then a tall tree on the side of the yard began creaking in the wind.
Tyler and his brothers watched as a powerful gust of wind hit the yard. With a loud crack! the tall tree crashed down directly in front of them. It smashed into the jungle gym Tyler had been lying on, bending it in half.
Tyler and his brothers stared at the fallen tree, their eyes wide.
Tyler shakily lifted his hand to touch a branch of the tree. It had fallen only a few inches from his nose. His hands shook, and his insides felt all jiggly-wiggly.
“Wow,” Brad said, his voice quiet. “You could have been smushed.”
Adam’s mouth hung open like a big letter O.
The three boys walked around the fallen tree, staring at the giant branches and the bent jungle gym.
Tyler looked down at the roots of the tree. They had grown together in a big ball and were pulled completely out of the ground. “That’s why the roots couldn’t hold the tree up,” Brad said. “They grew in a ball because the ground here is mostly sand.”
“The foolish man built his house upon the sand,” Adam said. He laughed.
Brad turned to Tyler. “How did you know the tree would fall?” he asked.
As Tyler looked at the ball of roots, a warm feeling washed away the fear he’d felt when the tree fell. “I listened to the still, small voice,” he said. “It told me to move, so I did.”
Adam looked at him with a big smile. “Your house is built on a rock.”

Some years ago, I was with President Marion G. Romney, meeting with mission presidents and their wives in Geneva, Switzerland. He told them that 50 years before, as a missionary boy in Australia, late one afternoon he had gone to a library to study. When he walked out, it was night. He looked up into the starry sky, and it happened. The Spirit touched him, and a certain witness was born in his soul.
He told those mission presidents that he did not know any more surely then as a member of the First Presidency that God the Father lives; that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Only Begotten of the Father; and that the fulness of the gospel had been restored than he did as a missionary boy 50 years before in Australia. He said that his testimony had changed in that it was much easier to get an answer from the Lord. The Lord’s presence was nearer, and he knew the Lord much better than he had 50 years before.

A convert to the Church, I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Although my parents were not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I look back with gratitude upon how they have influenced my life. My mother was born with a congenital heart defect and was told that having children would endanger her life. She waited eight years to have me; I am the only child in the family. Mother was a loving and compassionate person. She always spoke good of everyone and ingrained that teaching in me. In spite of health complications, she lived life to the fullest before she passed away at age fifty.